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Love Dances on the Green

Today, after baking three loaves of banana nut bread, and two loaves of zucchini-cranberry-nut bread, I sat down and finished stitching the binding on this green quilt. So that’s two done, in between everything else. I am pretty tired today, having survived a week that never seemed to quit. I was preparing the lessons for my classes, as well as getting the lessons ready for my friend Judy, who’s subbing for me while I’m gone to visit my sister in Delaware (thanks again, Judy!). I should have been packing, but the bananas were rotting, and the zucchini had been waiting, so it was do or watch-the-bananas-die time.

I try to name all my quilts–maybe because I’m in love with words. I haven’t yet figured out a name for the bluesy quilt on the bottom of my bed. It’s that old thing of being too tired to allow for creativity to blossom thing. I know it will come in time.

But I’d already picked out the name for this one when I was sewing the patches together. I bought at a garage sale a very very old Quotations Book, with all sorts of old-fashioned little verses and famous quotes and one-liners. So I looked up “green” in the index, and came up with a little ditty by Scott, of which I clipped out the part I liked.

The quilt’s label (don’t hold your breath for when that will be done!) will read:

“In hamlets, [love] dances on the green.”

I have this memory of the tiniest little oval of green in a small town–hamlet–in Yorkshire, and on that little patch of green, some children were playing. It was just after a rainstorm, and a couple of families were out walking, enjoying the nice cool evening air. Dave and I sat in the car and watched, enjoying what we were seeing–knowing we’d never glimpse the same thing in Riverside, nor would there ever be this kind of green in our near-desert town. I didn’t dare take a photo–not wanting to declare myself a tourist. We watched, then headed on out back to our B & B (where I did take the photo below). So, in a way, this quilt evokes that memory of our trip to Yorkshire, where children “danced” on the green.

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This is the anniversary of when my daughter became engaged, her voice a bubbly fountain of joy on the phone as she told me. It was a counterpoint to my brother staggering up Manhattan through the ash and horror, caught as he was in the events for which we remember this day.
Life is always a mix; I remember them both on this day, September 11th.

Create

"The creative act is not an act of creation in the sense of the Old Testament. It does not create something out of nothing: it uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, skills." ~Arthur Koestler